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Urban Air Pollution Modelling pp 304–312Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

The concentration-frequency distribution

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Part of the book series: Air Pollution Problems Series ((AIRPP))

Abstract

The histogram of urban air pollutant concentrations sampled over any given time span (1 min, 1 h, 24 h, etc.) is quite skew. There are only a few near-zero values, but afterwards the frequency increases sharply, only to decrease again gradually towards the higher concentrations. A large number of skew distribution functions known in statistics can be fitted to such data: Poisson (Wipperman, 1966); negative binomial (Prinz and Stratmann, 1966); Weibull (Barlow, 1971; Curran and Frank, 1975; Tsukatani and Shoyi, 1977); exponential (Barry, 1971; Scriven, 1971; Curran and Frank, 1975); gamma (Pearson IV) and Pearson VI (Lynn, 1972); beta (Pearson I) (Lynn, 1972; Graedel et al. 1974); three-parameter log-normal (Mage, 1975; Larsen, 1977a,b). Pollack (1973, 1975) demonstrated that there is a fundamental similarity among these distributions when utilised to fit air quality data. Benarie (1971) (see also chapter 15) proved that in two limiting cases the concentrations are, as a very good approximation, log-normal. One of these cases is the concentration distribution due to the single point source; the other is the concentration distribution of the area source, when the number of identifiable individual sources in any direction is greater than 10 (homogeneous area source). When the receptor is influenced by a relatively small number of individual sources, deviations from the log-normal appear, and the distribution approaches one or other of the skew distributions quoted above.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institut National de Recherche Chimique Appliquée, Vert-le-Petit, France

    Michel M. Benarie Chem. Eng., D.Sc. (Head of Department of Air Pollution)

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  1. Michel M. Benarie Chem. Eng., D.Sc.
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© 1980 Michel M. Benarie

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Benarie, M.M. (1980). The concentration-frequency distribution. In: Urban Air Pollution Modelling. Air Pollution Problems Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-03639-4_14

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